The University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) was established by the Ghanaian government in 2011. Its mission is to provide leadership and management of energy and natural resources through interdisciplinary approaches.

The Department of Chemical Sciences at UENR currently offers a BSc program in Chemistry while also providing foundational chemistry and biochemistry education to students from other departments.

As a result of illegal mining activities, many of Ghana's rivers and streams have become contaminated with heavy metals such as arsenic, chromium, lead, and mercury.

These metals can be toxic and carcinogenic to humans, as well as to wildlife and the environment. They pose a particularly serious health risk to the communities that rely on rivers for domestic and agricultural use.

Because they don't biodegrade, heavy metals have to be removed to make water safe. Existing technologies to do this are cost-prohibitive to use in developing countries like Ghana.

Dr. Ismaila Emahi

Biological chemist Ismaila Emahi, PhD, Lecturer of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UENR, is determined to find an affordable and effective way to clean up his country's waterways. 

"While the government and stakeholders are taking measures to halt these illegal mining activities, I am interested in taking a novel approach to develop cheap and sustainable approaches for removing toxic metals from the environment and making sure the affected communities get access to clean water," says Dr. Emahi.

For the past two years, he has been experimenting with use of biofilters made from plant matter to clean the water. The approach does show promise, but it isn't selective. In addition to the pollutants, it also removes minerals that are important components of healthy drinking water, like calcium and magnesium . 

As a next step, Dr. Emahi hopes to use equipment from Instrumental Access to develop DNA aptamers to selectively remove heavy metals while leaving other minerals in place. Aptamers are single-stranded sequences that can selectively bind specific molecules; they were also a key aspect of Dr. Emahi's PhD dissertation research.

"This research has the potential to create cheap and user-friendly tools to help millions of people in the developing world gain access to safe water," says Dr. Emahi.